There is a Spirit in man
and the breath of the Almighty giveth him understanding. Starting from
this interpretation, we can begin to order the baffling and teasing
aspects, the illusive nature of the world. Why this ever failing, but
never ending struggle against unseen odds to grasp and understand
and live with the Divine? Why, between the two, the absolute and the
changeless spirit, unseen but felt, and the hesitant and timid spirit
of a man, would there seem to be a great gulf fixed? Because we are
wrong. Because man finds the gulf within himself. He chafes at the
limitations of time and space? Yes; but he chafes more at the mystery
and weakness, the mingled deceitfulness and cunning and splendor of
the human heart. Because there is no one of us who can say, I have
made my life pure, I am free from my sin. He knows that the gulf is
there between the fallible and human, and the more than human; he does
not know how to cross it; he says,
"I would think until I found
Something I can never find
Something lying on the ground
In the bottom of my mind."
Here, then, can we not understand that mingling of mystic dignity
and profound humility, of awe-struck pride and utter self-abnegation,
wherewith the man of religion regards his race and himself? He is the
child of the Eternal; he, being man, alone knows that God is.
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